See: every otherwise able politician who said "Let's give Trump a chance, maybe we can work with him" after election day.

See also: every scientist who ever said "Well, dinosaurs are reptiles, so they must have dragged their tails on the ground", despite not one single one of the thousands of dinosaur trackways ever showing that.

Just to name a couple of my favorite examples.

"Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?"

"Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow though."

-Generals William T. Sherman and Ulysses S Grant, the Battle of Shiloh.

"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?"-Terry Pratchett's DEATH.

What a crock of shit. To avoid the main discussion topic, I want to pick on this one.

There are many other small internet forums. There are still active mailing lists. There's also big giant platforms like Reddit or FB, but they didn't make the rest useless, they just made the internet bigger and most of the new audience use those platforms.

And just because tourists from the Midwest cram themselves into the Times Square Applebees* every day doesn't make the unique cuisine elsewhere in New York inferior, it just means the Applebees is something familiar and easy.

Your small internet forums, IRC groups, mailing lists were the only things 15-20 years ago, and everyone started out on a fairly equal footing, because it was all so new. You joined forums/groups based on a particular interest, and these were scattered across the internet and, sometimes, the world. The takeover by the big sites, while it didn't destroy the small, focused forums and groups, it drove them to the periphery--or rather, it created a periphery and pushed the groups to it. They were always niche, but it didn't matter at the start because everything was niche. Nothing was familiar, and some communities were particularly difficult to find.

Now your typical internet user can get(and submit) all her content at Facebook or Reddit, curated and tailored exactly to her interests/beliefs/political views. She need never go to the proverbial second page of google search results, where the small discussion groups live on. It was probably always going to happen as the internet became more and more ubiquitous, and I would certainly never fault someone for taking the easy route. That's why the internet is indeed ubiquitous--it's fantastically easy to use, especially compared to two decades ago.

*full disclosure, I have no idea of there is an Applebees in Times Square, it was merely apt for the metaphor.

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to investigation." -Herbert Spencer

I could have sworn Wong said it was a pain in the ass and took the ads off back then, IIRC. I have had the adblocker turned off on this forum for years and as far as I can tell, there are no ads running since.

Anyway, what we have today is certainly child's play compared to what we had before. For example, it seems these days we don't even truly quote or give sources to our arguments. When I was posting in the SW: TLJ thread, it certainly felt like it could use that instead of just coming off of memory of what they thought they remembered in the previous movies to compare. What it became then was a circlejerk of the same arguments being repeated over and over again and that became pretty damn asinine and boring.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."

My favorite part of this place was all of the people I disagreed with vehemently, argued with incessantly, yet respected greatly. Admired even...because I learned from them. Not about turbolaser yields or warp drives but how to think, speak and debate logically. Early 2000's SDN was a wonderful place. It inspired me to educate myself. I do miss it sometimes. These days everyone self segregates into ideological vacuum chambers and shouts down anyone they disagree with. The valuable lessons I learned from this place back then involved engaging with and seeking to understand those I disagreed with. And occasionally telling them to fuck themselves.

In 2004 I probably would have made an obnoxious comment about how the sudden change to "mockery of stupid ideas" sounds a lot like "four legs good two legs better". But people change... though not completely. My first thought when I noticed the change was "these fuckers have gone full Animal Farm."

"A mad person thinks there's a gateway to hell in his basement. A mad genius builds one and turns it on." -CaptianChewbacca

My favorite part of this place was all of the people I disagreed with vehemently, argued with incessantly, yet respected greatly. Admired even...because I learned from them. Not about turbolaser yields or warp drives but how to think, speak and debate logically. Early 2000's SDN was a wonderful place. It inspired me to educate myself. I do miss it sometimes. These days everyone self segregates into ideological vacuum chambers and shouts down anyone they disagree with. The valuable lessons I learned from this place back then involved engaging with and seeking to understand those I disagreed with. And occasionally telling them to fuck themselves.

In 2004 I probably would have made an obnoxious comment about how the sudden change to "mockery of stupid ideas" sounds a lot like "four legs good two legs better". But people change... though not completely. My first thought when I noticed the change was "these fuckers have gone full Animal Farm."

Those were good times. Life moves on. I am definitely less active here than before, but I still have fond memories of my time from those days on SDN.

Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.

I rarely post here and never much substance. But I have been a long time lurker since nearly the beginning of the forum. However this forum has probably helped shape my way of thinking far more than any other source. I think the higher standards to debate and sourcing material has pushed me to always research and verify when I debate in the real world. This tendancy drives my wife crazy as I will be pulling up data to back up my arguments in mid argument. I have this forum to thank and I'm glad I've spent the countless hours here.

A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn
So Say We All
Night Stalkers Don't Quit
HAB member
RIP Pegasus. You died like you lived, killing toasters

Now your typical internet user can get(and submit) all her content at Facebook or Reddit, curated and tailored exactly to her interests/beliefs/political views. She need never go to the proverbial second page of google search results, where the small discussion groups live on. It was probably always going to happen as the internet became more and more ubiquitous, and I would certainly never fault someone for taking the easy route. That's why the internet is indeed ubiquitous--it's fantastically easy to use, especially compared to two decades ago.

And yet it's that very ease that also created things like The_Donald.

I've never had the best experience with SD.net, and for the most part my arguments here often ended up being unpleasant. Yet looking back I'm glad I went through those unpleasant arguments rather than getting trapped in a circle-jerk community where everyone just reinforces their lies harder and harder. Better to be an asshole who can think for himself, than yet another muppet smiling and agreeing to the same lie you all agreed to believe.

I don't want to sound like an old guy ragging on the new generation here - it's not really their fault they were born into a world with Facebook, Google, and reddit crying for their attention all the time in the name of ad revenue; and promising them comfort by reinforcing their ideas. But I do think that the world needs more people who are willing to engage in the unpleasant business of interacting with people who do not agree with you, and that the skill to develop is how to accept and deal with the inevitable unpleasantness.

That so many people in real life simply keep side-stepping these unpleasant disagreements is frankly a big reason why so many societies have become so utterly broken nowadays - because behind those fake smiles and "agree to disagree" are the same unresolved issues that no one worked to fix. Modern "forums" like facebook or reddit simply reinforce these problems. A good dose of the SD.net experience - even an unpleasant one - might in fact be the remedy.

On the flip side, while it's easy to immediately fall back to a safe space, they also have the advantage of easily finding places where their ideas can be challenged. Where other people will argue as violently as they will.

Let's face it, the Internet doesn't offer anything genuinely new. People still gossip and argue about the same shit they have for millennia. They still look at porn. They still look at pictures of cats. It's just the speed and ease has increased, as it always does, with both increases and decreases in quality depending on where you look. The only real issue I see with "kids these days" is that with the constant bombardment of information and the speed it is coming at them with: they are going to burn out in this area a shitload faster than we are.

Society isn't anymore "broken" than it ever has been. It's just easier and faster to find the cracks than it ever has been. Imagine it's 1980 and you want to find out..... has anyone ever been stabbed with a squirrel? That is a.... "wow, you aren't finding info on that shit" without a considerable amount of digging. Now: GOOGLE! And you can just bombard yourself with trivia and shit like this. You'd think this would lead to a super intelligent and knowledgeable populace. But humans don't work that way, we're still just dumb monkeys.

I've known that since they started making me take my shoes off at the airport

"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."

Let's face it, the Internet doesn't offer anything genuinely new. People still gossip and argue about the same shit they have for millennia. They still look at porn. They still look at pictures of cats. It's just the speed and ease has increased, as it always does, with both increases and decreases in quality depending on where you look. The only real issue I see with "kids these days" is that with the constant bombardment of information and the speed it is coming at them with: they are going to burn out in this area a shitload faster than we are.

Society isn't anymore "broken" than it ever has been. It's just easier and faster to find the cracks than it ever has been. Imagine it's 1980 and you want to find out..... has anyone ever been stabbed with a squirrel? That is a.... "wow, you aren't finding info on that shit" without a considerable amount of digging. Now: GOOGLE! And you can just bombard yourself with trivia and shit like this. You'd think this would lead to a super intelligent and knowledgeable populace. But humans don't work that way, we're still just dumb monkeys.

It's not genuinely new, but it has enabled our darker demons in the same way radio was used as a propaganda tool by the "populist" movements of the early 20th Century. People now recognize how mass media can be used to manipulate the masses, but there's still a great deal of denial that the same applies to the Internet. Indeed, it could be argued that one of the reasons why the populists are "winning" are because they are more adept at taking advantage of the Internet as a tool for creating echo chambers and entrenched polities than their opponents are.

It's not genuinely new, but it has enabled our darker demons in the same way radio was used as a propaganda tool by the "populist" movements of the early 20th Century. People now recognize how mass media can be used to manipulate the masses, but there's still a great deal of denial that the same applies to the Internet. Indeed, it could be argued that one of the reasons why the populists are "winning" are because they are more adept at taking advantage of the Internet as a tool for creating echo chambers and entrenched polities than their opponents are.

"X has enabled Y" for centuries though. The new and shiny amazes us that we just kind of ignore the common sense we've built up because, even though we're accessing the same "data," the new delivery mechanism fools us. Humans are fucking dumb. I have to wonder if it's an evolutionary thing. Like, babies learn when crawling to NOT crawl off steep drops. When they start walking, they have to relearn NOT to walk off steep drops all over again.

Some guy knocks on your front door offering something for nothing: immediately pegged as a scammer.
Some guy sends you an e-mail offering something for nothing: WOOT GOOD FORTUNE!

And the older generation is quick to decry this new "Advancement" as the downfall of civilization because it's different (except the exact same) as the shit THEIR parents were worried about. Damn, just look at music: I get this mental picture of a caveman beating a turtle shell with his dad in the background saying "When Oog young, Oog just listen to sound of rocks hitting rocks. Not beat on turtle shell like crazy man!"

I don't disagree with you all that much. I'm just saying there's nothing inherently special about the Internet over something else like.... the printing press. Rather than some guy yelling his hate at a crowd, he could now print a book that looked "professional." So, I'm sure a lot of garbage tripe got a pass for years since all the sudden something rare was now mass-produced. It could reach that many more people. That's what the Internet is: just a way to connect more people, faster.

I used to joke about that, as much as I could in an airport, up until a trip to St. Croix where the line got held up because the creepiest looking TSA dipshit was making this (pretty smokin' hot) woman also take off her socks and show him the arches of her feet and spread her toes. And all I can think, based on the look of the guys face, is "well, at least he doesn't have a hand in his pocket." I swear he was getting off on it, and the woman looked both ashamed and incredibly embarrassed, but all in the name of FREEDOM!

I have little respect for TSA line workers (if that makes me an ass, so be it) but have enjoyed my interactions with customs and the people who IMO do actual work.